Asia Pacific J Clin Nutr (1993) 2, 199-200

News

ACNS Meetings- 1993

Madeleine Ball

ACNS President

---

In 1993 the ACNS organized and supported two international meetings - the 3rd Australasian Clinical Nutrition meeting in Dunedin, New Zealand on 25/26 August and the Satellite meeting to the IUNS conference which was held in Melbourne on 23/24 September. The proceedings of the latter, an excellent meeting, on 'Appropriate Technologies in Body Composition' will be published in a supplement to the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition at the beginning of 1994. The meeting in Dunedin was a joint meeting with the New Zealand Nutrition Society and the papers presented will be published in the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society of New Zealand. We would, however, like to summarize the Dunedin meeting and ACNS members contribution in a short report in this Journal.

As well as being a joint Nutrition Societies meeting, the ACNS conference was held concurrently with meetings of the Endocrine Society of Australia, the New Zealand Society of Endocrinology, the Australian Diabetes Society, the New Zealand Society for the study of Diabetes and half a dozen other societies. The programme was designed to integrate the presentations where there was common interest and invited international speakers. We therefore commenced the meeting with a joint session on 'Lifestyle and Diabetes'. The speakers were Gabriel Riccardi from Naples and Monique Toe'ller from Dusseldorf. Both gave excellent talks on the subjects of 'Lifestyle of diabetic patients in Europe - a review' and 'The optimal composition of the Diabetic Dietary prescription' respectively.

We commenced the Nutrition Society meeting with a welcome to Dunedin. Mark Wahlqvist then presented the introductory lecture on the topic of 'Non-nutrients in Food' which provided an interesting review of a topic which many of us had not considered carefully before. This was followed by three short presentations of research by ACNS members.

Ian Puddy from Perth presented work from his group entitled 'The effects of calorie restriction and exercise on the glucose-insulin axis in sedentary overweight men'. Jenny Walker presented some work we had performed in Otago/Southland on 'Calcium intake and low fat diets' and Marianne Ha presented her work on 'The effect of apple fibre on lipids and lipoproteins' performed by some members of the Nutrition and Food Science Departments.

After lunch we had a session on Adolescent Nutrition and David Woodward from Hobart presented his work looking at food intake in teenagers. Michael Fay, from Otago University's Marketing Department, talked about Body Image - Advertising models and eating disorders in young women, and Jenny Reid from the Health Department discussed the new guidelines for Diet in Adolescence.

There followed a further session of three short papers and time to view a selection of posters.

The AGM, held prior to our evening dinner, included several important decisions. The minutes of this AGM have been sent to all committee members and will be sent to members at a future mailing opportunity, but if anyone wishes a copy now they may write to Professor Mark Wahlqvist at Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne or myself in the Department of Nutrition, University of Otago, Dunedin.

Our evening dinner was a most enjoyable experience with Pacific Island food and dancing. All of us were encouraged to join in the latter and there are some interesting photographs to illustrate our efforts.

Friday saw us continuing on the Pacific Island and Food and Culture theme. The morning session included a talk by Boyd Swinburn on the study he has set up in the Cook Islands. Excellent parallel sessions followed on the themes of the production of safe food, the reality of marae-based nutrition education programmes and the effect of television and other media on teenage diets and nutrition.

This completed our meeting, but a number of visiting nutritionists were then seen to enjoy the post-meeting tour of the chocolate factory (plus samples!). It was good to see the many visitors to Dunedin and we are glad that the Dunedin weather obliged us with sunshine.

Copyright © 1993 [Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition]. All rights reserved.

to the top